


what i've been looking for

by bageldiscourse



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Implied Sexual Content, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 00:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bageldiscourse/pseuds/bageldiscourse
Summary: @Barzal_97: Watching Eberle score the tying goal against Russia at the world juniors gets me everytime #WJHC #Canada





	what i've been looking for

**Author's Note:**

> my brain: write a soulbond au in under 24 hours  
> me: why  
> my brain: you gotta  
> so. here she is! the premise of this is that the eberle trade + mat making the team in the same year are fate-driven, and also mat’s big dumb crush on jordan. thank you for coming to my ted talk and enjoy.

Mat hasn’t met his soulmate yet, and he’s completely okay with that.

(Well, y’know. Mostly okay with it.)

See — he doesn’t have a soulmate, so he runs with the idea that he doesn’t have to get attached to people while he waits for his bond to come in.

He develops a reputation for sleeping around in his four years in the Dub, and he continues where he left off in Seattle with several of his teammates at World Juniors, and like, in hindsight, he was probably in love with Chabby, but. Life’s good, for the most part.

And if he’d spent the better half of his last season in juniors staring wistfully at the ceiling, dreaming about following the red string wrapped around his finger to a handsome boy at the end of it, well. That’s no distraction a multi-point night on the ice, or a night out off it won’t fix, at least temporarily.

* * *

As a kid, Mat was too curious about the red thread for his own good, but his mother was always willing to indulge him in stories of the myths behind the idea, of how she and his father bonded, and any other questions Mat could come up with.

“Your thread is always there,” she explains, running her hand through his hair as he lies in bed. “It’s invisible, but when you first come near your soulmate, it becomes easier to see.”

“But how will I _know_ ,” Mat starts to say. “How will I know who it is?”

“Well, when you first touch your soulmate, you’ll both feel your bonds snap into place,” his mom says. “That’s how you know.”

Mat nods, content and a little sleepy, and asks his mother if she ever wondered about her bond when she was younger, much the same as Mat does now.

His mother loves to tell this story, and she’s told it to Mat so many times before, but as he drifts to sleep she tells it again, whispers in the dark about how she met her husband in graduate school, coming off a rough breakup, fell in love with him, of course, and they lived happily ever after starting that first moment.

* * *

Mat wins the Memorial Cup in the summer without a soulmate and cracks the Islanders roster in the fall without one, so there’s no reason why he’d find his in Seattle or in Long Island, and at that point, he all but gives up hope.

(Like — he’s already been through two training camps before this, and he’s not counting on the third time to be the charm.

Maybe they’re back home in Canada, or something.)

So Mat keeps his head down and focuses on his game, and he doesn’t think about his soulmate, or lack thereof, and everything’s fine.

* * *

Mat’s kept up with the Islanders’ offseason moves, and he’d be lying to tell anyone the Strome-for-Eberle move didn’t get him excited at the prospect of making the team, this year.

Besides the obvious advantage of reuniting JT and Eberle on the same line, Mat would be teammates with the guy who defined wet dreams for Mat for like, a solid month when he was fifteen, and that’s pretty fucking surreal.

* * *

His bond snaps into place a handful of games into the season.

It had been a gradual buildup of sorts, wherein all throughout practices and games during preseason, Mat feels the thread pulling him off balance, pulling him to something — to _someone_ , and the thread hadn’t taken long at all to finally untangle itself.

It’s a Sunday, and Weight has finally given up on his wet dream of Eberle and Tavares playing on a line together, and dropped Jordan down to Mat’s line for practice.

And, okay, it’s not like that instantly creates tangible chemistry, and it’s highly unlikely that _Jordan Eberle_ is his soulmate, but. Ledds skating up to him and asking, “When did your bond come in?” manages to catch him off guard anyway, because like. Mat isn’t bonded, and he honestly doesn’t know what Ledds is talking about.

He must notice Mat’s extremely deer-in-the-headlights expression, because he holds up Mat’s left hand as if to prompt him to look. If he focuses really hard on his left pinky finger, he can faintly make out the thread that he’d blindly believed in his entire life. His hand starts to shake, slightly, and he’s not sure if the feeling in his chest is disappointment or relief when the thread becomes harder and harder to see as it drops to the ice. “Oh,” he says quietly. “I mean — I didn’t, until now?”

Ledds nods, knowing. “It’ll snap into place in no time,” he says. “I remember when mine did. That’s exciting stuff. I’m happy for you, kid.” He pats Mat on the back, like, reassuringly, and then skates over to some of the older guys and leaves Mat to continue staring at his thread, a little dumbly.

This must be the universe fucking with him in some dumb, elaborate coincidence that, to be honest, he probably deserves.

Jordan Eberle isn’t bonded to Mat Barzal.

Mat Barzal is too cocky for his own good and he sleeps around too much, but buried under his good hockey and great hair and deceptively smooth pick-up lines, Mat had a poster of Jordan Eberle — yeah, that one — in his bedroom when he was fifteen. Mat, who’d broken hearts in the Dub completely on accident, who’d broken his _own_ heart because Chabby had realized Mat isn’t all he’s cracked up to be, is absolutely not boyfriend material, nor is he like, bonded-to-Canadian-hero-Jordan-Eberle material.

So there’s that.

* * *

And, okay, after practice he realizes maybe he was jumping the gun on the whole bond thing a little.

It’s still possible that it’s someone else, of course, that Mat’s soulmate just happened to be in the room for practice and is long gone now, so Mat figures he’s just gonna have to wait it out for a bit until something else happens.

However long that may take.

So he’s back to square one, back where he started.

(He tugs on his thread that night when he can’t sleep, sometimes, now that he knows it’s there. Idly, he’ll tug and tug and tug and dream about the feeling of the snap of two people and one thread, of the power of a love so strong the thread can bend and tangle and stretch thousands of miles, but never break.)

He wakes up from his pregame nap and later before warmups, Weight tells the team he’s going with the same lineup from practice, which means Bailey’s sticking with the top line, and Jordan’s playing with Mat.

It’s a move that makes sense, in that it takes some pressure off the top line and, hopefully, even out the scoring, see if he can get more than one line going at once.

But, like, on the other hand, Mat’s going to be linemates with his childhood hero and, if he’s being honest, crush, and he might be freaking out a little.

Tito stops him as they’re walking through the tunnel and asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Mat says, and the tone he’s going for is reassuring, but it ends up coming out entirely unbelievable. “Just, y’know. Playing on a line with Jordan Eberle. No big deal.”

Tito laughs, a little, nudges Mat as they hit the ice for pre-game warmups. “Welcome to the league, eh?”

“No kidding,” Mat mutters, before they go their separate ways.

As if Mat’s life couldn’t get any more surreal, Weight calls for their line out to start the game, and so Mat hops the boards, skates to the circle, and that’s when it hits him, that’s when he _knows_ it’s Jordan.

Jordan knows, too, from the way he looks over at Mat and, like, fucking _grins_ at him, but Mat can’t think about that right now, has to jerk his head away and stop smiling stupidly back at Jordan.

He wins the faceoff, and they’re off.

Their line generates chances early, and Jordan gets his first goal as an Islander on the power play four minutes into the period. Mat’s not on the ice for it, but like. It’s pretty fucking incredible, watching his face light up when the puck hits the back of the net, the same way it did all those years ago when he was wearing red and white instead of orange and blue, and Mat was watching from the TV in his living room instead of from twenty feet away, where he can _feel_ Jordan’s excitement when he gets back to the bench.

Once Jordan does get back to the bench, just for a minute, takes off his right glove, and sure enough, when Mat takes off his left, Mat can see their connecting string, if he squints a little and the lights of Barclays hit the bench just right.

The world does not stop spinning, not even for a second, but Mat’s does, when Jordan looks up at him, as if to say _you knew?_

Mat shakes his head no, and it finally hits him, then, that it’s real, it’s real and palpable and Mat can reach out and gently at the string, and when he looks up, Jordan’s looking down at their hands, too.

Mat drops his hand, and Jordan his, and his world resumes as scheduled, but Mat can’t stop looking at the thread whenever he and Jordan hit the ice together.

Being bonded doesn’t change Mat’s playmaking, of course, and a smooth pass to Jordan late in the second goes past Nashville’s goalie, and Jordan’s smile when they celly is like, the best thing that’s ever happened in his life.

Capped by a JT hatty in the second and third, the team gets an easy win, and Ebs scores his first not one but two goals with his new team, and Mat — Mat’s fucking _bonded_.

To Jordan Eberle, no less.

Holy motherfucking _shit_.

* * *

Jordan’s stall is only a few over from Mat’s, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jordan walks over to him when Mat’s finishing up changing into street clothes, but. Jordan Eberle has been one long list of surprises to Mat, lately, so.

“So,” he says, and Mat can’t stop looking down at their string. “You wanna come home with me?”

“Absolutely I do,” Mat says, without thinking about it.

So Jordan takes Mat home, and Mat spends a good chunk of the ride home thinking of how to exist normally while bonded to Jordan fucking Eberle.

* * *

“Do you want a glass of water, or something to eat?” Jordan asks, as soon as they walk into his apartment.

“Uh, no, I’m okay,” Mat says, and so Jordan leads them to the couch in his living room.

“Do you wanna talk about this?” Jordan asks, after a long minute of both of them sitting in silence and not knowing what to say.

“I—” Mat says, because like, he really just wants to kiss Jordan as soon as possible. “Can I kiss you first?”

Mat thinks he maybe was being too forward with that, but Jordan’s nodding, and then leading in, and then they’re kissing, so. Mat figures it’s fine, probably.

It’s a good kiss, even if a little hesitant, at first, and then Jordan moves Mat a little so he’s lying horizontal on the couch and Jordan’s on top of him, kissing down Mat’s neck and fumbling to get his shirt off and holy God, how is this his life.

“I’ve liked you since I was fifteen,” Mat says, breathless.

Jordan stills from where he’s sucking a hickey into Mat’s neck, and straight-up _blushes_. “Are you serious?”

“So serious, man,” Mat says, and then, because he’s past the point of any embarrassment about this whole thing.

“Is it the Canada thing?”

Mat bites his lip, nodding. “Do you wanna see the tweet?”

Jordan looks up at Mat, incredulous, and settles for, “Later.”

Mat nods, because that’s probably for the best, and leans in to kiss Jordan again. “Holy shit. I can’t believe this.”

Jordan chuckles a little, then, and says, “Believe it.”

“Wait, so,” Mat says. “The trade. Was that—”

“I mean, I wanted to get out of Edmonton anyway,” Jordan says. “But, I had a feeling. I wanted to be here.”

“I was starting to think that I’d never find my soulmate,” Mat admits, and like, he’s not about to get all sad, but. It’s the truth.

He lifts his finger, watches as the string slowly pulls Jordan closer to him like he’d always imagined it would since he was a kid.

“Mat…” Jordan starts, but Mat keeps rambling.

“So it’s just — y’know, going from that to being bonded to Canada’s hero is, like. It’s just cool, I guess.” He stops himself there, before he does something dumb like _cries_ about it, he leans up and kisses Jordan one more time.

“I mean, that’s just a dumb nickname,” Jordan offers.

“Just kiss me again,” Mat says, so Jordan does, pulls off his shirt and leans down and kisses him until he’s unable to think about anything but the feeling of Jordan’s lips against his and the permanence of their bond.

* * *

Mat wakes up the next morning in a bed that is not his, which throws him off a little, at first. Once he becomes a little more awake, he’s immediately able to acknowledge a couple of things about his current situation.

First, he’s being cuddled pretty intensely by a sleeping Jordan Eberle, which kickstarts Mat’s memory and brings him to number two, which is that he definitely slept with Jordan Eberle last night.

Jordan wakes up slowly around an hour later, when Mat’s fucking around on Twitter. “Hey,” Mat says, reaching over to run his free hand through Jordan’s hair. “How’d you sleep?”

“Good,” Jordan replies. “You want some eggs?”

“You gonna make me breakfast to eat in bed?” Mat teases.

“I mean, I could,” Jordan shrugs.

“Oh my God,” Mat says, grinning at how Jordan is just — the entire package. “Unbelievable,” he mumbles, mostly to himself.

“Scrambled okay?” Jordan asks, slipping into sweats and a clean-enough Isles t-shirt.

“That’d be great,” Mat says, so Jordan leans down to kiss him on the way out before heading to the kitchen, and like. All in all, Mat would say his life is pretty great right now.

* * *

[epilogue, january 5]

“Hey,” Mat says, walking into the kitchen where Jordan’s making dinner for the two of them. “You check Twitter lately?”

Jordan raises an eyebrow at him. “No?”

Mat had just retweeted his tweet about watching Jordan at World Juniors, because he’d found it pretty fitting given that Canada had just won gold, and as much as he gets chirped by his friends for it, it’s pretty funny.

“You should do that,” Mat says, and he watches Jordan pull out his phone and open Twitter.

Once Jordan’s read the tweet, he grins and pulls Mat into a long kiss and says, “Jesus, Barz, that’s — you’re really cute, y’know that?”

Mat shrugs. “It’s how I feel, even six years later.”

“I love you,” Jordan says. “I love you, I really do.”

“Love you more,” Mat says instantly, and God, he really means that.

**Author's Note:**

> untagged characters: nick leddy, anthony beauvillier, head coach doug weight.  
> and yes i took the title from the hsm song, shut up.
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/bboesers)


End file.
